Notes and Editorial Reviews

Edward Joseph Collins – a rarely heard American Romantic

The ballet suite The Masque of the Red Death gives Strauss' Salome a very good run for its money in the decadence department.... If this isn't self recommending to all lovers of over-the-top late-Romantic extravagance then nothing ever will be. Collins's music is wonderfully lush and beautifully scored, and the contrast between this late work and the earlier, simpler Irish Rhapsody establishes him as something of a stylistic chameleon.

Albany Records completes its series of recording of the music of Edward Joseph Collins (1886-1951) by offering an anthology of the 10 discs in a slipcase. Collins left an oeuvre comprised of ten majorRead more orchestral works (including a symphony, two overtures and three suites), three piano concerti, Hymn to the Earth (for orchestra, choir, and four solo voices), several chamber works, 15 songs for voice and piano (four arranged by Verne Reynolds for chamber/string orchestra), and more than a dozen piano solo and duo scores and an opera, all of which are included in the anthology. Called “…an exemplar of romantic, tonal tradition, keenly lyrical in manner…” the influence and importance of this Illinois native’s music can now be assessed.

R E V I E W S:

From Volume 4 - "Joseph Collins' Hibernia (Irish Rhapsody) is a big, beautiful chuck on late Romantic music somewhat in the tradition of Delius' Paris. The large orchestra makes an impressive sound, Collins scores with unfailing brilliance and a keen ear, and the work's 18 minutes pass by with surprising swiftness. Piano Concerto No. 1 is every bit as successful, particularly its finale "All'Americana", which includes zesty rhythms and some surprising writing for an expanded percussion section (unusual in a work in this form dating from around 1923). It's a concise (29-minute), well constructed, thematically memorable piece that most composers would be proud to claim as their own.

The remaining two items are brief and charming, especially the Spiritual setting of Lil' David Play on Yo' Harp, which contains some very evocative writing for the title instruments. Lovely, vivacious performances (with William Wolfram a confident soloist in the concerto), very well played and conducted, and excellent recorded sound make this disc the perfect introduction to the work of this neglected but very worthy composer." – David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Volume 6 - "Hymn to the Earth...achieves a distinct grandeur, while Collins’s own text reflects his familiarity with great writing: it is, if somewhat elevated and archaic in tone, literate and eloquent...Variations on an Irish Folksong was probably completed after the 1927...These Variations are based primarily on “Oh! The Taters they are small over here!” the “potato famine” folksong...The earliest version of Cowboy’s Breakdown for piano solo, is found in a music notebook. Collins initialed and dated the score December 10, 1935, near the title; above the final measure he wrote the date January 10, 1936. It is interesting to note that Aaron Copland’s “cowboy” ballets, came after Collins’s concise, though equally energetic, Cowboy Breakdown, published in 1938." – Albany Records

From Volume 7 - "Boy is this sexy! The ballet suite The Masque of the Red Death gives Strauss' Salome a very good run for its money in the decadence department. I mean, just look at the five movement titles (which naturally are in French): Invocation Profane; Propos subtil et mysterieux; Valse seduisante; Chez le Sultan; and Orgie (of course!). If this isn't self recommending to all lovers of over-the-top late-Romantic extravagance then nothing ever will be. Collins' music is wonderfully lush and beautifully scored, and the contrast between this late work and the earlier, simpler Irish Rhapsody establishes him as something of a stylistic chameleon. Collins in fact wrote several "Irish" works and they run like a thread through his musical career, the present example being far more straightforwardly tuneful though no less well crafted than his later output.

Set of Four is a group of three miniatures (Prelude, To Her, and Passcaglia) surrounding a large, gorgeous second movement evocatively titled Moonlight and Dance. Like the ballet suite, this is harmonically rich, opulent, sophisticated music composed by an artist with a sure sense of style and (what's even better) a good sense of timing. All of these works deserve to be played and savored by music lovers. As with previous entries in this series, Marin Alsop gets very impressive results from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with whom she also is working on Naxos' Barber series. They seem to have a very good working relationship, and the players vividly characterize music that sometimes risks becoming harmonically elusive (think Delius with rhythm). Certainly these performances do the composer proud, and they are extremely well recorded. You may very well find this to be one of the most enjoyable novelties to come along in quite a while." – David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Volume 8 - "One cannot listen to several of the solo piano pieces—Nocturne, Etude, the Four Waltzes, the two selections from the six Valses charactéristiques, and Frédéric François—without hearing echoes of Brahms’s late piano pieces, with perhaps a bit of an overlay of Debussy. The concluding two tracks, however—Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jericho and The 5:48—are of a rather different musical persuasion. Clearly of a much later vintage (they date from the late 1940s), their spiky jazz rhythms and sharp dissonances suggest that Collins was by now in thrall to Gershwin, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and perhaps even Bernstein’s 1944 ballet, Fancy Free...The Piano Trio, at over 34 minutes, is the major work on the disc, and by all accounts it is a most appealing and significant addition to the piano-trio repertoire. Its date of composition is unknown, but the fact that it carries an opus number of 1 and that it was already being revised as early as 1921 tells us that Collins had to have been very young when he wrote it...the present disc is well worth acquiring by those with an interest in the fairly large body of work by post-Romantic American-born composers who had their musical personalities forged in the turn-of-the-20th-century German school. Recommended." – Jerry Dubins, Fanfare

Volume 9 presents "Collins’s one-act, two-scene opera, composed in the late 1930s. The plot is easy to summarize. The woman referred to in the title is Mary Lou Randolph, the daughter of a Virginia plantation owner, Col. Edmund Randolph. Mary Lou is about to be married to Robert Warren, a Yankee. Their timing couldn’t be worse, as news of the declaration of the Civil War comes during their engagement party, and Robert flees to join the Union army. End of scene 1. In scene 2, four years later, Robert returns to the plantation, having escaped from Confederate captivity. The war is ending, and he’s there, he says, to protect his beloved from “overzealous Northern soldiers.” Robert is arrested as a spy and is about to face the firing squad when his father-in-law-to-be shows up with a copy of General Grant’s Letters of Paroles. The execution is aborted, and all ends well. (If Puccini had written this, Col. Randolph would have arrived with the amnesty after Robert had been shot, which I think would have made for a better opera. But maybe that’s just me.) This is the first performance of the complete work...A fascinating, if flawed, musico-dramatic specimen that will be of interest to many. Recommended." – Andrew Quint, Fanfare

From Volume 10 - "While I wouldn’t exactly characterize Collins as a composer of light classics in the British vein of Eric Coates, Haydn Wood, or Edward German, some of his music, like the Arabesque for violin and piano, played here to excellent effect by violinist Arnaud Sussmann, has a strong whiff about it of a Kreisler salon piece. Collins, who was an accomplished violinist, is believed to have written five violin sonatas, but only the first movement of the op. 2/14 Sonata on this disc and the partial manuscript of another sonata survive. The writing is late Romantic with Brahms rapidly receding in the rearview mirror as Fauré and Debussy appear in the side-view mirrors." – Jerry Dubins, FanfareRead less

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: ( 1 Customer Review )

E.J. Collins, an author to discoverJuly 10, 2012By JOSE LUIS VILLAREJO (PUEBLA DE ALMORADIEL, TOLEDO)See All My Reviews"Dear Sirs With great pleasure I agree to your request to write a review for EJ Collins. I do not know his talent -if you have one- to write music for piano. So far I've only been able to hear his Symphony. After his audition I felt a little disappointed and I understand why only wrote one. This is a work somewhat disappointing, with no real theme, no melody, with moments of tension that ,in my opinion, does not develop properly and leave the listener with the feeling of something unfinished. Disappointing the third movement -Elegy- in which he could have thrown all the intensity of the work. The end, after a promising start is lost in corners without much sense to complete the symphony of a somewhat sudden and with little development. Nevertheless, it is a work -if only for curiosity- worth listening to."Report Abuse